These People I Can’t Stand
by Lilianae
Summary: The struggles with teenage angst, a big brother to surpass, and friends who just won’t go away, of one Sasuke Uchiha. He may not know what’s going on half of the time, but maybe no one will notice if he looks serious enough while dealing with it. AU.
1. Chapter One: Team

**Title:** These People I Can't Stand  
**Series:** Naruto  
**Rating:** T  
**Warnings:** Bucketloads of Sasuke, GaaNaru fluff, drugs including but not limited to fanfiction crack, some language, and references to canonverse events up to very recent chapters (so possible spoilers)  
**Pairings:** Naruto/Gaara, Lee/Sakura, Nagato/Konan, Jiraiya/Tsunade (the last two characters aren't mentioned by name, but it's meant to be them)  
**Setting:** School AU (present day Japan), starts from when they're the same age as at the beginning of the manga. Some ages and family ties have been changed, but nothing too radical.

* * *

**Chapter One: Team****  
**  
Had anyone told Sasuke even a month before it started, he would not have believed them.

He was a loner, and he liked things that way. He didn't need anybody else, they just got in the way. Nobody would ever understand him anyway.

Then his career plans as a Tragic Lone Wolf got ripped out of his hands and into tiny pieces, all objections smothered by rolling laughter and soft giggles –occasionally yelling and punches, and teary eyes staring at his and arms clinging to any part of him they could reach. By the time he was informed of the gravity of the situation by one of these two intruding creatures, it was too late to wriggle out of it. Sasuke, he was told, had friends.

His teachers were to blame, and he was convinced it was a conspiracy against him. A logical conclusion from a twelve-year-old.

Their old homeroom teacher had to have told the new one that these two drove him particularly high up the wall, and so he regularly got grouped together with them right from the start of the year. Worse yet, their new teacher was so adamant about the groups getting along he made that be half of their grading on every assignment.

This made him learn stupid details about, and give out personal information to these two losers the rest of the universe had decided his youth would be wasted hanging out with. Naruto liked ramen and wanted to become the prime minister of Japan, and preferably the whole world if that was possible. He had a dumb crush on Sakura, who had a dumb crush on Sasuke, who was neither dumb nor about to let himself get crushed by being thrown into an elementary school love triangle.

It made him notice things about, and before he knew it, let his guard down around these two children of his age who each had their poor prognoses for their lives and were discovering the will to fight them.

Sakura was very self-conscious and took out her insecurities on obsessively worrying about her looks to meet others' expectations. She had a kind if a little overdramatic heart, knowledge like a walking encyclopedia and the smarts to find out what she didn't know, and could throw a mean punch for a girl if you annoyed her enough.

Naruto was screaming for attention with all his being, the more over-the-top the method the better. He had been in and out of foster homes and temporary shelters all his life, being just a number and a burden to the system. When you acknowledged him as something more you never got rid of him –for better or for worse.

Sasuke himself had his standards to meet. He was an Uchiha, heir to everything you could possibly imagine inheriting, and not considered worthy of any of it. Before his parents had died, his father had made clear his brother could do everything better with half the effort, and Itachi wasn't even _interested_ in the fortune and power he would get when he grew up and didn't need a distant uncle he hardly knew as his legal guardian anymore. Only his father had ever told him he wasn't good enough, but the war was already declared.

And when at war, having allies doesn't (usually) hurt.

And so, wasting his youth hanging out with Naruto and Sakura made Sasuke grudgingly admit –first to himself, and much later and even more grudgingly to the other two– that he didn't mind having friends.

That was, of course, when the cosmic conspiracy decided to mess with him a little more, as if accepting the company and companionship of two people wasn't shocking enough. People moved in and out of their hometown of Konoha, and occasionally new classmates came along as well as old ones transferred away. The particular family with three children that moved in during their last year at their old school, however, deserved more than a passing mention for the hurricane it managed to raise, even with just the youngest sibling attending.

Really, to turn things upside down, one week of time and just his own crazy self as backup was all Gaara needed.


	2. Chapter Two: Same

**Chapter Two: Same****  
**  
"Did you hear? About the new kid?"

"My sister knows someone from his old school. We should stay away from him."

"I heard he punched someone just for sitting next to him."

"Yeah, and broke his arm and leg like it was nothing!"

"Really? That's not true, the way I heard it he _killed_ that kid. That's why they had to get out of town. They changed their names, too."

"Kid? I thought it was a teacher."

"It was his mother."

"No way! It makes sense, though. He doesn't have one."

"Sasuke?"

His name alerting him from blocking out the schoolyard gossip as background noise, Sasuke looked up from his book. That it got his attention might have also had something to do with being said by someone who wasn't irrelevant, but he wasn't going to admit that every second of the day. All the same, Naruto had an audience.

"I bet they don't know anyone from his old school at all."

Wishing he had kept on blocking the noise, Sasuke looked back to his studies like a good boy who does extra schoolwork on lunch breaks. Or a desperate boy who plans on acing the test his brother somehow _didn't_ two years ago. "Neither do you, dobe."

"So? I'm just saying it's this guy's first day and everybody's already made him into a monster. That's not fair."

"He does look pretty scary," Sakura butted in.

Sasuke nodded. "You missed the morning classes, have you even seen him? What they say–" He pointed with his pencil in their general direction without looking up. "–is starting to sound like something randomly picked out of a horror gekiga, but you don't know him any better."

"So it's okay that they're spreading nasty rumors of him?"

Naruto looked like someone had kicked his puppy and told him it was his fault for not taking better care of it. Oh god, he was taking this personally, wasn't he? Naruto had that annoying habit of sticking his nose into other people's business and _making_ it his business to fix whatever was wrong. Sometimes it worked and made him a new friend. Sometimes it just got him problems that wouldn't have to have been his.

Sakura saved him the trouble of carrying on the conversation. "Of course not! But we can't help it if they do, and we have nothing to defend him with. Maybe you should talk to him yourself first."

"You know, I'll do just that!"

"Don't get yourself killed," Sasuke muttered.

"I heard that, bastard."

"Then don't. Just saying."

Naruto stomped off determined to come back with the new kid in tow, to show his friends the famed monsterboy was just a kind, misunderstood soul who was ready to be their new best friend. The defiance and sincerity with which he took on the challenge would surely only make it more painful.

Sasuke barely knew the boy, either, but he had at least seen him before. He had looked him in the eye, and known those eyes were the problem-bringing type the minute he had. They were cold, full of rage, and daring you to give him an excuse to take it out on you. They allowed no one in and promised sharp fangs on a hand brought too close. Gaara Sabaku had issues. Sometimes you just knew.

It helped, of course, that Sasuke had issues, too.

It didn't surprise him when Naruto came back alone and furious, telling them how 'the jerk just glared and told me to leave him alone' and proceeded to declare the other kids could spread all the rumors they wanted and see if he cared. Things would go back to normal if they just stayed away from the boy.

Except they didn't, because you can't look into hell without having it look back at you, apparently.

It took Gaara a few days of reconnaissance before approaching him, and Sasuke should have seen it coming. Maybe the freaky ginger kid had never come across someone who had things in common with him, and was curious, taking his time deciding whether it was a good or a bad thing that he now had. Then he was just there all of a sudden, talking to him out of his own initiative, saying things Sasuke knew were true and wished weren't. It wasn't even gloating; Gaara was just telling him what he saw, because it was common ground.

And because this is twelve-year-old boys we are talking about, it didn't take many sentences into the conversation for them to switch to a language they were more comfortable with. It turned out Gaara spoke Fist just as fluently as his glares had warned about, and what Sasuke lacked in vocabulary and grammar he made up for with the will to get his point across.

He could hear his name being yelled somewhere in the background, and then Sakura appeared, forgetting how scary she thought Gaara looked and tried to pull him off him. An A for effort, but she ended up stumbling back with what was going to be a black eye.

Naruto caught her before she fell on her back, and the rest was predictable.

Sasuke's part in the fight was ultimately deemed purely self-defense, and several eyewitnesses were eager to confirm the new kid had dealt the first blow. Naruto, thorough in everything he did, had made no effort to actually end the fight after his friend had been safe, and so he was going to share detention time with the creep.

Afterwards Sasuke felt really stupid for having felt sorry for him.

Of what the two boys had talked about in detention, he only knew that no one else –including himself and Sakura– would ever be treated to the full version. To his surprise it wasn't because the new kid had killed Naruto the moment their supervisor had excused himself from the room to go cough his lungs out and decided not to return for two hours. To an even bigger surprise of his, when Naruto walked out the front door to his patiently waiting and patched up friends, Gaara walked out right next to him, and even hesitantly returned the wave Naruto gave him when they parted. He spared Sakura and him a brief glance, but did or said nothing, and just walked off to the two older kids who had showed up to wait for him. Not even a death glare.

Apparently Naruto had even more in common with Gaara than Sasuke could ever have dreamed (had nightmares?) of having. Or so he told them. The credibility of his words diminished with every second he spent convincing them that the monsterboy really _was_ just a kind, misunderstood soul, and that he _was_ going to be their new friend, starting tomorrow.

But Gaara didn't show up at school the next day, or the one after that. He stayed absent for the rest of the week.

His return was poorly timed in a sense, as the same day happened to get picked by their old headmaster Sarutobi as the day to have the heart attack that would finally force him to retire. As if Gaara hadn't been the subject of enough wild mass guessing already, the most recent addition to the mythos was that he had somehow caused it. No matter, all students got the rest of the day off starting from the first period, to recover from the shock, and though Sasuke couldn't care less about the headmaster, he did have a shock to recover from.

"What do you guys wanna do?" Naruto looked from Sasuke to Sakura, and finally to their fourth wheel, as they made their way down the street to no particular destination.

"Go home?" groaned Sasuke.

"Are you inviting us?"

"No."

"Then you're not going either, we're gonna do something fun together!" Sasuke rolled his eyes. Naruto could be such a nursery school teacher sometimes.

"We could just find a nice place to eat lunch in," Sakura suggested.

"The beach."

All heads turned to Gaara, who had said his first word of the day. This morning he had simply walked over to their table and sat down next to Naruto like he belonged there, and had tailed them in quiet determination since. It took a while for anyone to comprehend the grumbled syllables had had some relevance to the conversation, but finally they all agreed. It was a cloudy, slightly chilly day. They would most likely get the whole place to themselves.

For obvious reasons, Sasuke kept Gaara under a strict surveillance the whole day. He expected him to at least throw some spontaneous trauma-triggered hissy fit at some point or, on the other extreme, act like he was desperate to get accepted into the group, like he should be. Perhaps apologize to them for the bruise Sakura's mother's makeup didn't quite cover and the similar black and blue (and green and purple, by now) marks all over Sasuke's body –and no doubt Naruto's, as well.

Mostly the guy just sat there, keeping a bit more distance than they kept from each other, and stared. At the horizon, at the sand he kept digging his toes in, at them.

Even when Sasuke dared to leave Sakura alone with him for a few seconds to attempt to catch Naruto and throw him into the ocean for a joke that must have been said to taunt him to do just that, the only thing that looked different when he came back was that they were… _talking_. Or trying to, about the subtle differences of their eye colors. Her giggle had never sounded so forced.

The sun was beginning to set when she scooted to Sasuke's side, almost close enough to lean against him. She thought he didn't notice, so he didn't bother to object to it. The day had already been strange enough to slip from promises made to yourself about not letting an affectionate girl child violate your personal space.

"I don't think he knows how," she whispered, and he didn't have to guess who the topic of the day was.

"To be friends," she added, after a pause.

A little more than a hearing distance away in front of them, two pairs of feet waded in the languid waves. Since when did Naruto talk without an eardrum-breaking volume or waving his hands like a windmill? And did Gaara suddenly look taller? After a while it occurred to him he was simply walking with his back straight.

"I won't let him hurt you again," Sasuke beat out of himself. It sounded a bit more chivalrous than he had intended, and the 'you' _did_ mean Naruto as well. There, he had admitted he cared about them yet again. Was there no end to his humiliation?

Now Sakura did lean. Definitely too chivalrous.

"I know. But that's what I meant… I guess that's all he knows."

Naruto's laughter chimed across the beach, and the boy next to him flinched but didn't move away when a hand made a short stay on his shoulder.

And just like that, no one even asking for Sasuke's consent, Gaara was adopted.


	3. Chapter Three: Family

**Chapter Three: Family****  
**  
The library had worse air-conditioning than the rest of the school, but it was worth every drop of sweat.

How did your average elementary school students spend their recess anyway, by running head-first into walls and screaming? Whatever the case, Sasuke had always been certain he wanted no part in such nonsense, and what better way to avoid it than making use of the least popular room in the school. At least here he didn't have to tolerate feeling badly mascara'd eyes on his back and practically hearing the hissing when Sakura clung to his arm and stared back at them.

At the moment she was –possibly aware of that Sasuke was a cat person, because any information people could use against him, they of course found a way to get access to– reminding him of a much less hostile feline sound, as she sat much too close for comfort again and he mentally congratulated himself for yet another benefit of their group's momentary isolation. Nobody could see him needing help with his homework.

Well, except for Naruto, who was immersed in studies of his own, apparently thinking his school book was doing a good job hiding what he was reading between it.

It wasn't that Sasuke considered it his business what kind of magazines some people let their adopted sons have, but he did wish they would consider the collateral damage done to the minds of these sons' friends who stumbled on them when they came to visit. The school's sex education classes were traumatizing enough.

(On second thought, perhaps they _could_ be more informative. After all, one of the increasingly ridiculous hearsay theories on why Gaara and the three of them tolerated each other was that somehow, as a result of their unsupervised detention time, he was pregnant with Naruto's child, and obviously whoever had come up with that one was missing some vital details about human reproduction. And here he had though the rumor of Naruto having some mysterious power that enabled him to instantly befriend anyone had been unreal.)

And yes, Gaara was there, too. _Still._

Now that it had been established he wasn't going to kill you on a whim, though, he was pretty low-maintenance. Content to just mind his own business while you minded yours somewhere within his earshot, the somewhat tamed monsterboy was curled up next to a wavering tower, sampling its topmost building block. A quick glance identified books on astronomy, demons in different mythologies, skeletal structures of animals, and ornamental plants.

All of a sudden a cell phone beeped, and to Sasuke's mild surprise it was Gaara who reached into his bag and checked his messages.

No need to ponder who it was from, though. Apart from the three of them, he had only seen Gaara initiate any interaction with the two teenagers who had started picking him up at school more and more frequently. 'Family', he had introduced them as.

Naruto put down his book, and looked at Gaara expectantly. Gaara looked back, almost… embarrassed? Naruto smiled. Sasuke didn't get it.

"Uh, so I was thinking… what do you guys say about staying over at my place tonight? I've got this, well, cool new movie I'd like to show you."

"Naruto, we just had a sleepover at your place on Monday," Sakura said. "You know my parents don't like the idea of me spending nights at a boy's house."

Naruto shrugged. "Don't spend the night, then. We can watch it in the afternoon and get you home before dark. Sasuke?"

"No."

"Why not? We cleaned up my room and everything!"

'We'? Couldn't Naruto keep his room in an inhabitable condition without the help of his latest (and permanent, he insisted) parents? The strange old couple didn't seem the type to bother with picking up other people's mess from the floor just because their son was too lazy, though.

"I'm busy." And that should qualify as the end of the discussion, Sasuke decided. Naruto disagreed.

"If you're gonna miss your brother so much, bring him along. You can take a day off from your pissing contest every once in a while."

Sasuke just stared at him, appalled. How dare that moron refer to his quest of surpassing Itachi at school work, sports, video games, holding your breath underwater… –hell, just surpassing Itachi at _anything_– like it was something trivial and childish? Naruto clearly didn't understand. His brother was one up on him at staring without blinking again, and revenge is serious business. Whether Itachi knew there was a contest or not was irrelevant.

Naruto looked back to Gaara. "But you're coming, right?"

Gaara nodded. That was a given.

What was this sudden pajama party phase Naruto was going through, anyway? He kept coming up with the stupidest excuses to invite them over –on Monday it had been to help him eat some food he didn't like because it wasn't in noodle form.

And Gaara always accepted. He practically lived with Naruto.

Before Sasuke managed to sink low enough to actually gain interest in solving this mystery, he noticed an approaching familiar face out of the corner of his eye.

"Hello, children. Studying hard, I see."

Sakura chirped 'Hatake-sensei' a greeting that would give any thrush and nightingale an inferiority complex, Sasuke sunk further into his chair, Naruto instinctively hid his cover-up book (not that Kakashi was likely to say anything about it), and Gaara glanced up from his own reading material and went back to ignoring his surroundings. Just as Sasuke hoped Kakashi had been passing by and would be on his way now, the mismatched eyes of his teacher saw through his attempt to blend in with the furniture.

"I'd like to borrow Uchiha-kun for a while before your next class. Come with me?"

Sasuke got up, grumbling, and followed the man. As soon as they left his friends behind, he could feel Kakashi's cheerful mask start to drop. Was he in trouble? He had done nothing to get into any, but he could sense their conversation would be very serious.

He had had a 'man-to-man' talk with Kakashi on a few occasions before, and his prematurely graying teacher seemed to take monitoring his wellbeing rather personally. Mostly he got asked how he was doing, with badly disguised enquiry on whether everything was okay.

It was understandable, Sasuke supposed. Their first talk had been after Kakashi had found out another teacher had offered to give Sasuke a higher grade from his classes in exchange for favors that would most definitely have been inappropriate, and though the man(?) had quickly gotten fired (for reasons never made public), that sort of thing could make you protective of the already targeted.

Not that he couldn't take care of himself. He had just come to accept that Kakashi trying to play father figure was something he would have to tolerate to avoid attracting more fussing.

He _knew_ this time he wouldn't be hearing lame chitchat about Kakashi's pet dogs or birdwatching hobby, when the door to the empty classroom opened and another familiar face was waiting for him.

"Hi, Sasuke. Sorry I'm late, I... helped an old lady with her luggage..."

The old excuse his uncle gave when he had gotten caught up at work for longer than promised seemed out of place to say the least. What had he been late for now? The Vice President of Uchiha Copiers sat in a small chair with his shoulders hunched, and without the smile that was about as annoying as Naruto's. The lack of it was suddenly far more unpleasant.

"What's happened?"

Kakashi brought him a chair so they could sit in a circle. Both men were waiting for the other to start talking.

"It's about Itachi," Obito finally told him. "When is the last time you saw him?"

At the beginning of his next class, Sasuke was aware of three new things.

One. His uncle and teacher were childhood friends, and Obito had even saved Kakashi's life once (in the accident that had caused one of Kakashi's eyes to go blind and look the way it did). Kakashi was keeping his seeing eye on him because Obito thought he reminded him too much of his friend in their younger days to not get into trouble.

So Sasuke had at least been right about there being a conspiracy.

Two. Itachi was gone. He had always been secretive about where and with whom he spent his time, but Sasuke would never have expected him to run off and join a gang.

Had he no sensible bone in his body? Who not only shows no interest in, but downright _throws away_ a legally guaranteed place in the sun to live with a bunch of criminals, looking over his shoulder? Itachi Uchiha does.

Three. Sakura's much dreaded hug could actually make you forget for a while about your big brother having dumped you for a more interesting life, even if you didn't return it. Naruto knew a look that said he understood and that he wouldn't dump you no matter how boring you got. And Gaara did nothing to show it, but he understood.

The world must have come to an end, but sometimes they truly did.

For the next weeks and eventually months, there was no escaping the Fussing. Everybody was spending more time at his house all of a sudden; his uncle because he felt guilty or something, his friends because they thought that having caught him receptive to comforting once meant he now needed them around to kiss away his boo-boos, and Sasuke himself because school just didn't seem to be getting him anywhere that mattered and so he didn't think it was necessary for him to attend every day.

One evening, when an attempt at a cheer-up visit had ended particularly late and his friends needed a ride home, a fourth new thing came to his attention.

Gaara _did_ live with Naruto.

Or, Naruto had landed himself the questionable honor of having the runt of the Sabaku litter pick him as his 'friend to go to on days when it's not a good idea to go home', and for the past month or so Gaara had simply not gone home at all anymore. A week and two days before the summer vacation, they helped him pack his things so he and his siblings could move to the relatives who had finally realized to take them in. If they couldn't wait until the end of the school year to go back to Suna, things must have been pretty messed up.

Gaara got his first Sakura-hug, and he didn't return it either, but she didn't mind. She gave him her email address and told him he had better write to it.

Naruto gave him a crushing, intruding, teary Naruto-hug and told him he would write and call him every day (Gaara already had his address and number, of course). As far as his limbs were motile at all in that rib-breaker squeeze, he made a commendable attempt to hug back.

Sasuke nodded at him and made a vague grunt he hoped was interpretable as something. That gesture Gaara returned like a mirror.


	4. Chapter Four: Timeskip

**Chapter Four: Timeskip****  
**  
"Sasuke, you have got to be kidding!"

"Of course I am, don't I look it?"

"You know, you actually do. You were born without any smiling-muscles, right? So that must be what you look like when you're telling a joke."

"Naruto!"

"What? You know I'm right, Sakura-chan."

The beginning of the summer vacation had not been intended to be the Breaking of the Fellowship it turned out to be, but it couldn't be helped. Gaara was already gone anyway, and Naruto's plans for spending the month traveling with his adoptive parents had been made ages ago, but apparently only Sakura remaining in Konoha was one defection too many for things to go peacefully.

What was their problem? Couldn't they see that he had to do this, and that nobody else _could_ do it?

Sakura gave Naruto a glare Gaara had probably helped her perfect, and then turned to Sasuke without it. "You don't even know where to start looking for Itachi! If the police or the private detectives your uncle hired can't find him–"

"They don't know him like I do. Nobody does." And this was so true it would have been incriminating to elaborate. Sasuke was by no means a stalker, he just had a knack for gathering intel, and it wasn't like Itachi had even written in that diary all that much.

"At least don't go alone!" There were those tears of hers again. He tried to tell himself they were a trick to persuade him.

"Yeah, you're just gonna get lost and mugged without us strong men to protect you. This is by far your stupidest idea ev–"

As usual, Sakura saved him from having to come up with a retort to Naruto's comments, this time by punching the blond idiot for calling her a man.

In the end he said he would rethink his plan, ask Kakashi for advice on how to deal with school at the same time if he did end up getting involved in tracking down and dragging back his older brother, and that he would definitely have a long talk with Obito about whether it was necessary at all. Because a couple of parental figures reassuring that he was needed here and that it was only a matter of days before Itachi came back on his own was all he would need.

Who lies to his friends' angry, weeping faces, runs away from home in the night without as much as a note, and drops out from any kind of formal education at thirteen to prove his delinquent brother that he is the opposite of boring? Sasuke Uchiha does.

He was doing things the way that was for their own good, of course. He knew Sakura had meant every word of offering to go with him, and that underneath the insults Naruto had agreed with her. He couldn't let them ruin their lives, too. He was protecting them.

It made perfect sense.

In the following period of vagrancy that ended up taking three years instead of months, he picked up allies, made enemies, and followed every clue he could sniff out to the dead end they all seemed to lead. He got into fights, got his ass kicked, and kicked a wide variety of buttocks himself. It was the biggest adventure of his life.

Which is why you are hearing about it in such rich detail.

Allright, so maybe he was so high on something he didn't know where he was most of the time, but that's just a guess. At least judging from the things that went on around him and how much he remembered about them, he decided that he must have been. All the same, finally he did find Itachi, and corner him for an epic showdown.

And according to that hobo who had seen the whole thing rather sober in comparison, 'epic' was quite right.

They had started with shouting incomprehensible nonsense at each other –something about seeing things, and kaleidoscopes and lights. Then they had thrown punches in each other's general direction, hitting air every time and looking around confused when the other wasn't where he had seemed to be. At some point Itachi had told Sasuke to stop turning into snakes.

When they had seemingly concluded they couldn't hit each other with fists, they had started throwing stuff. Pebbles, garbage from the dumpsters on the alley they were in, and anything they got their hands on. Their witness said he might have seen a knife, but from the way it had been thrown neither of them had probably realized it was one. They had stumbled around, finally making contact –probably accidentally– and Sasuke had gotten poked in the eye. While he had been doubling over holding his face, Itachi had done the same, apparently out of dizziness and headache.

Somewhere in the midst of it they had started a fire.

Cue some more weird talk about snakes, their speech now so impaired it had been hard to make out any other words. Itachi had puked and passed out, Sasuke collapsing soon after. That was how they had been found, but it wasn't the police that had gotten to them first.

No, that might have saved him some dignity.

Before he opened his eyes, he could hear their voices, and they were too loud to be hallucinatory. They were familiar, too. A man and a woman. He vaguely registered having missed those two voices and wondered why.

"–shouting, we're in a hospital!"

"Well I don't care, once he's out of here I'll beat him up so bad he ends up back here again!"

"That's a given, me too. But quiet down, will you."

Why indeed. Better pretend to be in a coma or something a while longer.

"He is awake," a third voice calmly announced, and Sasuke screamed a few selected curses at the guy inside his head. The other two voices shut up immediately, and then–

"SASUKE!"

–he was being hugged to death by a monster that looked like a blur of pink and yellow. And it was crying to his chest, which kind of hurt because he had a few cuts there. Naruto looked up at him first.

"You've got some nerve, you bastard! Where the hell have you been for three years?" The voice was a little deeper than he remembered, and the pudgy, round face had gained some angles, but yes, that had to be Naruto.

"Don't you ever dare to do something like that again!" And that was Sakura. Much less begging and much more demanding than the last time he had seen her. "Do you realize how hard you were to track down? If we had gotten to you minutes later you could have had choked on your own vomit or burned to death! We were worried sick about you!"

They had tracked him down? They had been _looking for_ him? Again, what the hell was their problem?

"They love you. What the hell is _your_ problem?"

Oh, right, the third voice. Sasuke strained his neck to look up at the boy who could read his mind and talk down to him like he was discussing the weather, even if he had always been half a head shorter. He didn't have to, to know who it was, though.

"I-Ita… chi?"

Gaara made the slightest smirk. "Yes, he is one. Though not anymore." He took a deliberate, stretched pause like some quiz show host from hell. "No, he isn't dead. He is in the room next to yours. Your uncle is with him right now."

"What are you doing here?" His throat hurt when he talked, and for some reason he was wasting breaths on asking why Gaara wasn't in Suna, playing happy family with his precious siblings.

"Naruto told me they had found you."

Figures. It wasn't that he had expected Gaara to be looking for him, he had never been clingy towards him like Naruto and Sakura apparently still were. Of course it took _Naruto_ to drag his scrawny ass to even his hospital room.

"...so I met up with them at the nearest train station, and we ran to where you had been spotted and carried you and your brother to the hospital. I stayed with you while Sakura called your uncle and Naruto lied to the police to make things as easy for you two as possible. I would have preferred to go help him, but you were crying, and raving rather loudly about how you couldn't decide whether you were an eagle or a hawk, so I let you hold my hand because it made you shut up. And you owe me a shirt."


	5. Chapter Five: Homecoming

**Chapter Five: Homecoming**

Rehabilitation was another timeskip, but one Sasuke remembered more about.

During it, he learned to tolerate the concerned and still slightly guilty looks of his uncle, and to let himself feel just a tiny bit of guilt, too, for being the cause of them. He watched Itachi struggle with starting over and learning to do things one sense short, having gone almost completely blind as a side-effect of whatever he had been on.

Sasuke wasn't sure if he should consider himself having finally bested his brother, as it didn't feel like a victory. Perhaps a truce wouldn't be too much of a yielding considering the circumstances, though.

He even got a visit from Kakashi, whom somebody had obviously told too much: the third question his former teacher asked him was what kind of eagle or hawk he had thought of being. Sasuke got rid of the topic by saying that actually, he had been a duck instead, and just agreeing to the first species of ducks Kakashi mentioned.

He was also told how his friends had found him.

Three of those allies he had made had ratted him out –with his best interests in mind, he was assured; he had seemed in pretty bad shape the last time they had worked together. Sasuke insisted he had _not_ been homeless and broke and could have perfectly well _afforded_ a belt, the rope had just felt like a convenient thing to have around and what better place to store it than wrapping it around your waist. And the bandages around his wrists had totally not been what they looked like. He would never even think of killing himself, drunk, high or sober. Probably.

Either way, Naruto and Sakura had gotten a deal of being kept informed whenever the trio bumped into him again. They had always gotten there too late to even catch a glimpse of him, though.

Meanwhile, a branch of Itachi's gang had made the mistake of stepping on the toes of one now-very-intact Sabaku clan. Gaara said they had 'given him information'.

Naruto said Gaara and his brother and cousin had caught a bunch of guys robbing their grandmother's place and beaten them up pretty thoroughly, and that Gaara's cousin, as an ex-member, had recognized the burglars and given the little terror a free hand in fishing out anything they knew about where Itachi hung out. One of the locations was two streets away from where their joyous reunion had taken place.

And Sakura said Gaara's brother had had to use all his diplomatic skills to convince him that he should get his own injuries treated and leave the rest of the interrogations to the cops. When Gaara had finally agreed to go to the hospital, Naruto had practically teleported there the second he had received the call, her trying to keep up. From her description of _that_ joyous reunion, Sasuke could easily picture Naruto setting a camp at Gaara's bedside like the redhead had died and come back to life instead of suffering a broken wrist and a concussion ('Colles fracture' and 'MTBI', she had insisted). Always the overreactor.

He was not informed of whether Gaara had needed hand-holding as well, but finding out Naruto had at least had to feed him a couple of times was consolation enough.

He eventually caught up in his studies and started high school with Naruto and Sakura –and Gaara, who by then had moved back to Konoha with his new family and then some in tow.

Aware of his misadventure, some girls now left Sasuke alone because he was 'dangerous', which was a relief. Also aware of his misadventure, some girls now swarmed him with tenfold enthusiasm because he was 'dangerous', which he decided was much more annoying than Naruto, Sakura and Gaara could ever manage to be, so he kept them around as a human shield of sorts. If he was with them, he would at least get left alone by others.

The only flaw in that plan was that apparently you couldn't leave your loser friends unattended without having them make _more_ loser friends, who were now by association Sasuke's friends, too.

Naruto the stupid little outcast blended seamlessly into any clique, had a girl following of his own no matter how oblivious he was to it, and didn't need to copy anyone's homework and steal test sheets from the teachers' office to get by in class anymore. Complex-ridden crybaby Sakura held her head high and her ground in an argument, even if it wasn't with Naruto. She hadn't asked Sasuke once if he thought she was beautiful, as if she didn't need his assurance anymore.

And Gaara? The antisocial freak who followed them around because nobody else dared to talk to him was the goddamn picture of a gentleman, trusted and respected by students and teachers alike. And he _smiled_. _Without_ looking like he was going to pick up an axe and hack you to pieces with that grin on.

It seemed Sasuke wasn't the only one who still found him creepy at times, though.

One day some random guy had just happened to bump into them and drop his stuff, and Gaara had had to go and work his 'I'm nice and polite now' campaign and help him pick it up. Both him and the random guy had looked at each other eyes wide as saucers (well, the random guy's eyes had already looked a bit like saucers anyway) and stuttered a 'YOU!' in utter horror.

Then Gaara had –without a warning, because there was a gap in his social skills where it would have been said you had to ask a person first to do something that looks like an attack– yanked the guy's sleeve up and carefully turned his forearm around to inspect it from every angle. Then he had looked at his corresponding leg with much interest, before finally gasping a sincerely relieved, amazed 'You're okay!'

The guy had, with quickly dispersing nervousness, explained something about how yeah, he had recovered completely and was even the captain of some sports team now, and something about how injuries heal quickly when you're in the Springtime of Youth and whatnot.

Gaara had flashed his Smile and told him he was glad things had turned out that way, and _then_ the guy had looked like he had seen a ghost.

"An old friend of yours?" Sakura had asked when the guy had left in a hurry after some undeniably courageous introductions.

"I went to school with him before I moved to Konoha for the first time," Gaara had explained, and then taken a pause to see if he needed to elaborate.

"I broke his arm and leg because he sat next to me."

And despite of this, Naruto still dared to sit next to him in the class they had been on their way to.

But Naruto and Gaara were inseparable anyway. Sasuke had heard on at least one occasion Sakura and her friend (who probably wasn't called Pig, but he couldn't remember her real name, and Sakura called her that all the time) plotting to come up with a portmanteau name to refer to both of them simultaneously, because you pretty much couldn't get one without the other.

And if Gaara could read his mind every once in a while, Sasuke was positive that sometimes Gaara and Naruto simply shared a consciousness. They could have a conversation through looks and smiles and only a few random words or inside jokes spoken aloud. Maybe they were the last two of a telepathic alien race. After all, Naruto kept calling _Sasuke_ a bastard, but it wasn't like the pedigreed Uchiha heir was the one here who didn't even know who his birth parents were.

Sasuke watched Naruto scribble the finishing touches to his art project, which was due in fifteen minutes.

The blond had erased and redrawn the fox's tail so many times it looked like it had nine instead of one, and the ears still looked like those of a rabbit's. Sasuke knew the subject of the picture was what had been Naruto's imaginary friend as a child when he hadn't had any real ones (friends, not foxes), because –surprise surprise, Gaara had had one, too (a fat, drunken tanuki, of course, not a fox or anything normal like that).

Was there anything at all that Naruto had and Gaara didn't?

"Ooh, now I see what you have been trying to tell me! Thank you so much, Gaara-sensei!"

Slightly frowning at the honorific, Gaara helped Matsuri gather her books and wished her good luck on her test, when a big guy, who looked like he had fallen asleep in class and had someone with drawing skills equal to Naruto's doodle on his face, walked up to them.

"Pretty little thing, that girlfriend of yours," he told Gaara with a wink.

"Thank you, so is your boyfriend," his brother replied, with a smirk. There was no need to correct things in front of Gaara's friends anymore –if they didn't know by now that pursuing close proximity with the opposite sex was somewhere in the top three on Kankuro's list of interests and just about the second to last thing on Gaara's, they hadn't been paying attention.

(Sasuke was very aware of the latter, since it was about as high up on his own. There were so many better ways to spend your time efficiently than worrying about your own or your peers' pathetic juvenile attempts at courtship, and he was –secretly, of course– happy that someone saw him eye to eye on this.)

"Alas, it seems Sasori and I have broken up," Kankuro sighed. "Ever since we moved here he's been spending all his time with those artist pricks."

"Sai is not a prick," Naruto said absent-mindedly, and erased one more foxtail.

"Most of the time," added Sakura.

"You have my approval of applying the description to Deidara, though," Gaara assured with a shrug, and Sasuke silently agreed. Throwing fire crackers at random passerbys tended to get you on people's bad sides. The guy was probably only calling his antics 'art' because it made it easier for him to get away with them.

"At least my brother still loves me," Kankuro said in an annoyingly theatrical voice, and slung his bag off his back, rummaging something from it. "Anyway, I just came to tell Naruto I have something of his. I guess you forgot this when you last stayed over?"

Naruto stared at the strange hat that… stared back. It had eyes and big buck teeth. A typical, stupid thing Naruto would own.

"…No, I've got mine at home. At least I wore it last night, and I haven't stayed overnight at your place in weeks."

A typical, stupid thing Naruto would _admit_ to owning.

"You sure? Then whose–"

Gaara was looking rather uncomfortable. Sakura, Sasuke could tell, was struggling not to snicker or coo at how cute it was or something.

"You got one, too! That's awesome, now we match!" Naruto, of course, made no such effort. "Wasn't I right? It does help you sleep."

The contrast in volume between the question and the answer was so huge Sasuke wasn't sure if anyone besides Naruto and him had heard it (or if anyone at all had been intended to hear it), but Gaara's lips had moved when he nodded, so he must have said it.

"Because it reminds me of you."

And then in the next blink of an eye the redhead, slightly red from other parts of his head than just hair, turned to Kankuro and calmly told him he would appreciate it if he didn't bring any more of his laundry to the school. Sasuke mentally crossed off 'stupid sleeping cap' from his list of things Naruto had but Gaara didn't.

The list grew even shorter in the next few weeks, and then one day the readings on the Garuto Weirdness Meter just went throught the roof.

(Yes, Sakura and Pig's creative efforts had finally paid off and they had a collective title. Naruto liked it, even, because besides Gaara + Naruto, it also sounded like GAR + Naruto. He joked about how they should take up superhero-ing, because together they would be too badass for the villains of the world to handle.)

Neither of them were anywhere to be found during the lunch break, but it wasn't like Sasuke even looked for them. He could use a bit of time alone, without trying to figure out their disturbing half-lidded staring contests as a distraction, and Sakura was eating with Pi– okay, Yamanaka, anyway, or more like trying to convince Yamanaka to eat.

His relaxation was short-lived, however, because when the two boys turned up for the rest of the day, it seemed they had forgotten what _else_ to do.

Gaara didn't pay attention in class and got his first angry 'ahem' from a teacher. Naruto didn't bother to have a stealthy eraser-bit war with Inuzuka or to interrupt the teacher with stupid comments, and got left alone simply because he wasn't causing any problems. During the breaks they didn't chat with other students, rush to finish any last-minute schoolwork, or try to mess with Sasuke's head by having one of their half-telepathic conversations.

No, all they did was stared at each other and smiled.

When school was over and they each headed for their homes, Naruto suddenly got all fidgety and stuttered 'see you tomorrow' or something equally self-evident.

Gaara stood there looking like he knew he should do something but had no idea what. That was nothing new.

Naruto was blushing. That was definitely new.

Then Gaara smiled yet again and extended his hand, which Naruto took a couple of seconds of hesitation to grab and approximately five minutes to let go of. What the hell?

If Gaara was ever informal and laid-back with anyone, that someone would be Naruto, who in turn wouldn't know formal behavior if it bit him in the ass. They had known each other for years and been instantly on first-name terms. And suddenly –a handshake? That strange caricature of a prim gesture had looked more like an emergency measure to avoid doing something completely reckless.

Little did Sasuke know (though he should have), that wasn't even off the scale yet.

.

* * *

GAR = A term for male anime characters who are so overwhelmingly badass it's okay to fangirl them even if you are a guy yourself. And this is the point where you lulz: originated from someone describing their feelings for such a character and misspelling the critical part of the sentence "I'm gay for…"

I just had to include that because some people _do_ refer to Sage!Naruto as 'GARuto'.


	6. Chapter Six: Idiots

**Chapter Six: Idiots**

Sasuke liked to think he didn't ask for much in life.

He had friends who apparently realized to stay away every once in a while because he needed to be alone. He had his big brother back, and since the only real effect Itachi's handicap seemed to have on their lives was Sasuke having to protect his clothes from the airborne hair of his seeing-eye mutt Amaterasu (she looked like a white wolf, and naming pets after video game characters they resemble is what cool kids do), he didn't have to bother with feeling like a villain for picking on a blind guy whenever they got into a squabble. His uncle had stopped trying to be a good parent and instead just was a good parent. He was clean of drugs, did well at school, and things were uncharacteristically peachy.

All he could hope for on top of that was a little peace of mind, because he was positive this calm was just temporary and in-between storms. Deciding to sneak into an empty classroom for the lunch break to eat in peace, and maybe be productive and read a book, he didn't know he was tempting fate.

The door slid open without a sound. Sasuke's hand dropped from the handle and he froze.

Wrong empty classroom.

"–mmfOH FUCK! How long have you stood there?"

Approximately ten seconds, which had felt like ten minutes. It might as well have been ten hours and they still wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't dropped his packed lunch with a loud clang.

"Close the door! Close the door!" Naruto scrambled up from his chair to do it for him before even finishing the first sentence, seeing as Sasuke was still obviously too traumatized for life to do anything.

Gaara stood up,_ from the same chair_, about as gracefully as you can when your seat cushion decides to get up first and you're very much caught with your hand in the cookie jar (yes, considering the situation, that figure of speech was much better for your sanity than 'with your pants down'… not that comparing Naruto's back pockets to cookie jars was all that comforting, either).

"Listen," Naruto started, out of breath, and Sasuke couldn't see what he could do but obey. "This… this isn't what it looks like!"

"Really, it isn't?" Sasuke managed to almost shout. "So I didn't just see Gaara sitting in your lap and shoving his tongue down your throat? You've got the wrong Uchiha, I happen to still have 6/3 vision!"

"Okay, okay, so maybe it's exactly what it looks like," Naruto yelped out with hand gestures that told him to lower his voice a bit. You know things are upside down when _Naruto Uzumaki_ is hushing _you_. "Is that so terrible?"

"You're gay?"

"Well…" Naruto took a pale hand in his and turned to smile at its blushing owner. "I am for him."

The blushing redhead just shrugged, and Sasuke's inner Gaara-Human dictionary alternated between a 'duh' and the possibility that he had simply never thought of labeling his sexual orientation, and considered this a plausible option.

"But… _you're_ the one who keeps pointing out random girls and telling me to check out their breasts!"

Naruto sighed at the ceiling. "Because you never would if I didn't tell you to. And who doesn't like boobs? They're cushy."

When Sasuke didn't talk back, Gaara saw fit to summarize for him, as if to prove Naruto hadn't sucked out and swallowed his voice. "It's the person that matters," he said, leaning a bit to the person who had by now been established as his. "Not a body part."

For a second, Sasuke felt like either punching him for assuming he needed to be told something that basic, or punching himself for letting _Gaara_ tell him something that basic.

"We were gonna let you and Sakura know soon," Naruto assured. "Just weren't sure how, I guess... though she might know already, now that I think about it."

Sasuke found himself nodding stiffly. "She probably knew before you did." Sakura was the one with the people skills; if something was going on with her friends –good or bad– she was there to mother you about it before you knew what hit you.

Naruto chuckled, a little uncomfortably, and put his free hand on Sasuke's shoulder. Gaara scowled when he flinched away at the touch.

"It's not contagious."

Sasuke raised his hands in defense and glared back. "Look, I couldn't care less what you do with each other. As long as you're not putting any moves on _me_ you can be whatever the hell you want." He was quite proud of how unfazed he sounded. Yes, he was taking this very calmly and maturely and was not in shock at all.

Naruto laughed with more confidence, and put his hand back where it had been. "Cocky, aren't we? Just because half the female student body has turned ogling you into an art form regardless of whether you ever stare back or not, doesn't mean you're so gorgeous all the guys want you, too. Don't worry, Sasu-chan, your virtue is safe with us."

When Sasuke's disturbed glare told him he was _not_ amused, Naruto just grinned wider and leaned closer.

"Hey, it's still me. I'm in love with him, not developing a lisp and a passion for interior decoration."

A small gasp made itself heard, and Sasuke suddenly felt unreasonably intruding. It wasn't like it was his fault Gaara wasn't as desensitized to confessions as he was by now.

"Allright, I get it already," he carefully worded with his best attempt at a no particular tone. "Like I said, it's none of my business. Congratulations. Now get out of my face before I change my mind and think you _are_ going to kiss me, too."

Naruto did back off, if only to take hold of Gaara's other hand as well and lock eyes with him. "I meant that you know. I am... and I do... so, so much."

"I know. Me too." And all of a sudden Gaara was all soft voice and warm smile, like he had been with increasing frequency recently.

"You love you so, so much, too?"

Gaara nodded, showing no sign that he was joking, or even knew he might be suspected of doing so. Sasuke stared in morbid fascination as he raised their linked hands to his lips and gently kissed Naruto's fingers. "But I love you more."

Four years ago, those same hands had been used to grab a fistful of hair to pull the other into a headbutt. It felt difficult to imagine now.

"Nobody else knows, and we would like to keep it that way for a while," Gaara finally reverted to the serious mode Sasuke was more familiar with. "Don't spread this around on your own."

He couldn't help the amused snort and raised eyebrow. "Because that's what I do, right?"

Gaara picked the still-slightly-axe-wielding variation from his arsenal of smiles. "Not a good time to start."

They stared at each other in silence for a second or two, and then, convinced of that whatever stoic, manly understanding they might have was still there, Sasuke turned to leave.

"Right, well, I'll let you two newlyweds get back to your foreplay. If I may suggest, though, there's something you might want to try."

"...Go ahead, I guess."

"It's called locking the door. Feels amazing."

Satisfied with having at least been able to make the pair look embarrassed (before brushing it aside to put his _first_ suggestion into practice and making him quickly flee the classroom), Sasuke leaned against the outside of the door and sighed, allowing his totally-chill-with-this facade fade.

He shook his head in attempt to clear it.

Not with a bang, not with a whimper... not even with his friends every once in a while understanding him, _this_ is how the world ended. He shook his head some more at the stray thought that if that was the case, then the end of the world would probably involve some banging and whimpering as well.

Naruto and Gaara? His two weirdest friends –in tooth-rotting, head over heels, high school love?

What did they _see_ in each other?

He thought back to everything he knew about the both of them and shuddered at the amount of details that started to add up. He tried to chalk it up to a passing puppy crush that would soon fade and restore the status quo of their group's dynamics, but he knew better than to not expect the worst by now.

Maybe this had been the status quo all along.

Sasuke spotted Itachi's clique in the crowd down the hall and dashed to seize the opportunity. Nothing like listening to the debates of stoners turned teenage philosophers to bleach your brain.

On the next recess they met Sakura again, and the assumption that she had already figured things out proved correct. She was happy for them to say the least, but from her yaoi manga collection, Sasuke should have guessed that, too.

What was it with girls and gay guys? Then again, he didn't quite understand the attraction straight guys had to lesbians, either –there was more of their preferred gender involved, yes, but of the kind that would have no interest in _them_ whatsoever. At least Sakura was very discreet and supportive about it instead of freaking out their poor freshly uncloseted friends by asking if she could watch them make out or something.

Yamanaka knew about as much as Sakura did, so they decided the best course of action would be to just confirm her suspicions and have Sakura swear her to keeping it a secret until they wanted it out. She would of course get to be the first to spread the news, so she agreed.

She would make a fine reporter one day. And no, Sasuke was _not_ telling her that.

Naruto kept his promise, like he always did (Even the one he had given at the hospital –to beat Sasuke up so that he would end up back there. It might have been a comradely wrestling match, and the gash at the back of Sasuke's head that had needed stitches and messed up his hairstyle for a while might have come from falling on a rock they had failed to clear away beforehand, but it qualified nonetheless). The fact that he and Gaara were together didn't really change either of them any more than they might have already changed each other throughout the years, so Sasuke saw no reason to change things either.

He still kept them at an arm's length, but he still kept them.

Life went on, school was hell, and Naruto and Gaara were more joined at the hip than the conjoined twins from Itachi's class –business as usual. Sasuke continued to get dragged along to silly social situations, such as a revival of their elementary school habit of frequent movie and game nights, parties any of their other friends might be having, and, on one unfortunately memorable occasion from their last year of high school, a triple date.

An assiduously rehearsed frown as his favorite accessory, the younger of Uchiha's prodigal prodigies sipped his tomato juice and wished his liver could still handle alcohol.

Next to him, Yamanaka, whom Sakura had persuaded him to accompany, was telling him about his latest bad breakup, how she had gotten over her unrequited crush on Sasuke ages ago, and how she was glad to be able to have him as a friend instead because he always managed to motivate her out of thinking she should just give up dating and resign herself to spinsterhood. Across the table, Sakura and Gaara watched the current performance, occasionally peeking at each other's reactions to see when it was proper to burst out laughing.

"Well? What did you think?" Naruto demanded of the two redheads of the troupe as he skipped over from the stage of the karaoke bar.

"Yes, let us now face the unbribable judgment of the ones our hearts have chosen! I promised myself, if I let Naruto-kun outsing me I–"

"A draw," Sakura interrupted. Gaara nodded.

Lee sat down next to Sakura, little gears in his head turning loud enough for Sasuke to hear, over the issue of whether this counted as being 'outsang' in the impromptu howling contest no one had even bothered to make up rules for. Naruto decided to plop himself down in Gaara's lap, his expression saying it did count.

"No fair, you're supposed to be on my side."

"No, I believe I was supposed to be 'unbribable'," he was told. "The jury was unanimous."

Naruto dragged on his bad impression of hurt feelings a little longer, and then leaned across the table, his cheerful air regained.

Behold –the Garuto version of a lovers' spat. Blink and you'll miss it.

"Allright, the stage is yours, Sasuke! Thick-brows and I warmed up the audience for you, now go do your thing and knock 'em dead!"

"Oh yeah, you should totally do that! I bet you have a good singing voice!" Yamanaka echoed her fellow bimbo blonde.

"How about you and Sakura have another duet instead," Sasuke tried, rummaging his brain for a compliment to attach, and finding he didn't have any in stock. Where was distracting flattery the _one_ time in your life when you needed it?

"Aww, but it's your turn…"

"You can have it. I really don't mind." The girls' exaggerated shrilling had been entertaining enough the first time around, and if his friends' idea of fun was to voluntarily lose face, who was he to judge. Damned if he would go so far as to take part in it, though.

Naruto sighed and got to his feet, offering a hand to his arguably better half. "Wanna show them how it's done?"

Gaara went along, with astounding precision, in re-enacting their Handshake from two years prior, and just stared at the hand in surprise. "I-I… I've never sung before, I don't know if…"

Naruto leaned close enough to whisper (but apparently forgot the actual whispering). "You hum beautifully enough when you think I'm asleep. Did you hear _me_ just now? That was my best shot instead of just goofing around, to be honest."

Gaara blinked. Then he took the hand and smiled. "Let's embarrass ourselves."

"Thoroughly!" Naruto grinned back and led him to the stage. Sakura and Lee cheered. Yamanaka made a long sigh, which Sasuke joined her in.

"It should be illegal to be that happy…"

Sakura and Lee were engaged in a conversation of their own, so Sasuke assumed Yamanaka must have said it to him. He made an acknowledging grunt, still looking at the stage where Naruto was a beat ahead of the music and Gaara two beats behind, neither of them seeming to mind. "Idiots are easily amused."

He didn't bother to make the double meaning less obvious, and expected her to prove him right by giggling as if it was a joke and not a fact. Instead her head fell on his shoulder and she patted his hand.

"Don't worry, Sasuke-kun. We'll both find someone to be happy idiots with, just wait and see."

He heard laughter, and darted his gaze back to the resident happy idiots, ready to snap at them if they dared to make fun of his situation. He found them wobblling on their feet and clinging together to stay upright, not even remembering their audience existed, trying to sing more than laugh –at each other– and failing miserably. Sasuke strained to remind himself they were just as sober as he was, as some stupid form of solidarity had made the entire group refuse to get drunk if he couldn't. Well, Naruto and Gaara could have had him fooled.

God. They deserved each other.

Sasuke put an arm around Yamanaka's shoulders in something remotely resembling a hug, like Sakura had ordered him to do if she needed comforting. He honestly couldn't decide whether it was comforting or frightening him that she had just attempted herself.


	7. Chapter Seven: Dreams

**Chapter Seven: Dreams**

The bounce in Sakura's step, and the excited squeaks she made with each as she approached, was nothing he hadn't seen before. She had rushed to him like that before, just for the simple reason that he was there to be rushed to. Now her gaze darted evenly between him and the people he sat among, as she caught her breath and clutched the piece of paper to her chest.

"I… I got in!"

There was a cheer, drowned out by a squeal as Yamanaka jumped up and dragged the Hyuuga girl with her.

"Bacchikoi bacchikoi baby!"

The little dance ritual ended in a group hug, at which point the rest of the flock got up and joined in. Sasuke took his time, and noticed he wasn't the only one who didn't dive in head first. Gaara had noticed the same, but directed his smile straight forward and opened his arms, as Sakura emerged from the bundle.

"Congratulations. I knew you would," he told her, looking like he had hugged people all his life and nothing like the brute you shouldn't let near anything fragile.

She thanked him, and turned to the one person present who had yet to take part in her joy.

"So, you're going to be a doctor, then," Sasuke acknowledged.

"It would appear so," she beamed, ignoring for now Naruto's addition of 'A damn fine one, too'.

Sasuke, however, decided to leap at the chance and nodded at him. What's the use of talking when you have Naruto around to do it for you? It proved to be enough, as her arms wrapped around him, and Sasuke forced his own hands out of his pockets. If Gaara was going around initiating hugs (and whatever cuddling went on between him and Naruto did _not_ count), he could handle returning one. It was certainly easier when that was all he was expected to return.

"Does Lee-san know yet?" Yamanaka enquired, as she snatched away the center of attention.

"Not yet, I just got the letter myself. I'll tell him right after school, though," Sakura replied, and with that they snuck beyond hearing distance of anything other than giggles, the Hyuuga girl pitter-pattering along like she didn't know how to include herself but was determined to try anyway.

Sasuke had been skeptical of Sakura's boyfriend. The guy was weird, and not in a way he was used to, because this weirdness was loud and ridiculously serious about the stupidest things, and apparently completely oblivious to being that (as opposed to Naruto, who knew perfectly well he was getting on people's nerves, but considered any reaction a positive one). His looks didn't fit the standards Sasuke hadn't realized he had, of deserving to possibly have his genes mixed with Sakura's. He had no sense of style, to the point that it became a style.

Well, she had been skeptical, too, at first. The poor bastard had started his pathetic wooing thinking himself a knight in a shining armor, gotten a crash course into less outdated gender roles as a response, and Sasuke had thought that would be the last they saw of him. But this Lee character was a persistent one, and apparently not afraid of a princess who could handle the dragon on her own. No doubt he would have nothing against Sakura's decision to pursue an ambitious career instead of becoming an obedient housewife.

Not that Sasuke cared, much. But he would expect, or tolerate, nothing less for her.

"…and also, now he _has_ to listen to your advice when you say he's training too hard. It's coming from an expert on medicine," was heard from the girls' general direction. The voice was Naruto's.

"Well, that's one way of looking at it. So what's your relationship's occupational perk?" Sakura smirked.

Naruto frowned in thought half a second, and drew his boyfriend closer. "I'll have him write my speeches, so I'll sound really smart."

Gaara considered this, and replied: "And he can handle the annoying public debates for me, since he's good at improvising means to get his point across and converting stubborn people."

"Or I could just teach you my art of dumb luck persuasion," suggested the blond.

"And I could teach you how to use big words," agreed the redhead.

Sakura shook her head with a smile. "Kokkai beware…"

"So you're still serious about it? I thought it was something like how back in first grade, Shino wanted to be an 'ant farmer' when he grows up." Inuzuka made bunny quotes at the term, and Sasuke doubted it was because it was trademarked.

"Myrmecologist," grunted the boy tucked in a hoodie like a caterpillar in its cocoon. The people sitting close enough to hear him turned to look, having not noticed him until now. "It's an actual profession."

"Whatever, bad example. How about that Haku kid who wanted to be an ice princess, then? What happened to him, anyway? I never heard from him after he moved away in third."

"Um…"

More head-turning followed. Hinata Hyuuga was about to speak, and nobody dared to so much as breathe in fear of ruining the occasion.

"Kiba-kun, I take it you haven't followed figure skating. He has won three World Championships and took bronze at the last Olympics." She then glanced around the crowd out of habit, and would have apologized for speaking if Naruto hadn't weaned her out of that last year.

"Wow, no, I haven't. Good for him, then. Uh… just to make sure, in _men's_ series?" Hinata nodded. "Okay, I give up. But you guys realize you can't both be the prime minister, right? Or does one of you plan on becoming The Emperor instead?"

Naruto laughed. "I guess as long as we get to be where the decisions are made, it doesn't matter what the title is exactly. Or, hey, we totally _could_ both be the prime minister, just not at the same time, you know."

"Well, remind me to vote for you, then," Inuzuka shrugged.

One more notch on the list of successful conversions à la dumb luck persuasion, Sasuke noted. And one less thing on the list of things Naruto had and Gaara didn't, but at this point such a list would be quite pointless. Obviously the only thing on it was the ability to grow facial hair.

Sasuke watched the conversation go on, making sure to detect in time any signs of being made to join it, lest he would have to divulge his own career plans –or rather, the lack of them.

It was no wonder Itachi had weaseled out of ever becoming a part of Uchiha Copiers, lately putting his energy into his band instead (And damn if that bastard hadn't gotten some name for it already. Not to mention that somehow, between going nearly _blind_ and graduating from high school, Itachi had learned to play a keyboard), or that their uncle had resigned years ago, starting a small business of his own. The company was a hellhole of backstabbing, wrapped up neatly in a ribbon of red tape for the sake of red tape, and already Sasuke knew grandpa Madara was a boss you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy (unless… no, not even Deidara).

But this path had always been a given. Grandpa expected at least one of the brothers to join the family business (and be his henchman slash gofer), as had the whole family ever since their parents got married. Sasuke himself had made it his goal to do what Itachi was too stupid to do and do it well (ideally, with Itachi there to watch and weep), but something told him there was no way of doing well what his 'legally guaranteed place in the sun' was beginning to reveal itself to contain.

In the midst of it, he had neglected to construct a Plan B. This was a weakness not to be shown.

A week later Sasuke found himself wearing more black than was his norm and sitting between a silently mourning, hand-holding Garuto and hugging, tear-gushing Sakura and Lee, with another weakness in the process of not being shown. He had hardly known Gaara's grandmother, and here he was, surrounded by her children and grandchildren as they waited to go pick her up at the crematorium.

Gaara had told him he didn't have to come, even though he was invited. He knew Sasuke had been old enough to remember when it was his parents' bones and ash that got chopsticked into urns.

So of course Sasuke had come. At the moment he was beginning to wish he hadn't, as he listened to Naruto recount the surprising events involving _his_ parents from the day before.

"I guess I always knew they were alive," he said through a few sobs that obviously weren't for granny Chiyo anymore, "just didn't want to believe it."

"They were that bad?" Sakura asked with a nasal voice and sniffed. God, teary people sounded so disgusting.

Naruto shook his head. "I'd kept hearing they were, from people who didn't know anything, and I guess I'd added to it myself by thinking they must have hated me if they didn't wanna keep me." He winced a little and continued with a wry smile. "I made an equally bad first impression myself."

The others looked at him expectantly, and when he didn't say more, Gaara did. "He punched his father."

Naruto laughed a little. "Yeah… I did, right in the gut. Not very smart, but I'd resented them for so long it just came to that when they were finally there. They understood, though, and they're cool, it was all one big fucking misunderstanding. They never dumped me in the first place and they'd been looking for me."

"And you believe them?" Sasuke asked.

Naruto nodded, and Gaara let go of his hand to put his arm around him. "So do I," the redhead said. He had been there, of course.

Naruto's parents had been in junior high school when he was born, and obviously too young to raise a child. Their own parents had pressured them into giving him up for adoption, and despite of their efforts to remain a part of his life, they had lost track of him for eighteen years.

He had his mother's eyes and sense of humor.

His father was also a rising politician, started out from as good as nothing and now well on his way to preceding his son in realizing his dream.

They were still together and in love.

They were proud of how he had turned out, albeit in their absence.

And that was just great.

By the time Naruto got to gushing about how his new, perfect, loving, alive mommy and daddy had named him after the hero of their favorite book, Sasuke jumped to his feet and stomped outside. He hardly registered his friends calling after him; he was not going to listen to any more.

He found his way to the garden pond and sat down on the bank. If he could still smoke he would have lit a cigarette to occupy himself, but was left with only staring at the water and thinking instead.

When Sasuke had first met Naruto, the blond boy had sat next to him at a pier and declared them friends by saying 'I heard you don't have any parents. Neither do I. Let's play together!'

They had not played together, but Naruto had talked, jumped around and played enough 'ninjas vs. pirates' for the both of them, assuming the roles of both sides of the battle and ending the game in falling off the pier and claiming he meant to do that, because he had just been made walk the plank. Sasuke had gone home without a word and Naruto had gotten more annoying with each passing day.

_Naruto_ had had no parents. Sasuke had, and didn't anymore. Was he really too stupid to tell the difference? Sakura had belittled the fact once, gotten told off, and hadn't brought it up since. At least she didn't claim to understand something she didn't.

Sasuke heard footsteps behind him. Great, now one of them had come to talk to him.

Was it Naruto –apologizing he had upset Sasuke but ready to pick a fight if he had to grovel too much? Sakura perhaps –feeling pity for him but trying not to show it, pleading that they should all get along and scolding him for the lack of effort?

Gaara? Come to stand there like he had no weaknesses, watch Sasuke be a mess and tell him something brutally honest? That sounded likely. Well he was not going to see him cry for a second time. Sasuke cooked up a quick sarcastic greeting and turned around to fix a glare.

"…What the hell do _you_ want?" Not the sarcastic greeting he had had in mind, but still face-savingly scornful.

"I can see why you rather came here to honor Chiyo-baasama's memory. This place is beautiful," Lee said as he sat down beside him. His voice had that sickening optimistic determination in it that it usually did, even when filtered through the snot and tears he had at least had the decency to wipe off his face. "I heard this was one of her own favorite spots, she would sit here fishing and meditating quite often."

Sasuke noticed the koi swimming around the pond and a fishing rod on a rack nearby. There was no hook at the end of the line. Then again, what would the old lady have done with an expensive ornamental carp if she had caught one? Cooked it for dinner? What an idiotic pastime nonetheless.

"But, I think it would be better for Gaara-kun to have his friends around him at the moment. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be orphaned three times so early in one's life, but perhaps you have a better idea of that, Sasuke-kun."

"What are you talking about? Gaara's not an orphan," Sasuke snapped. "His father's still alive."

Lee looked at him innocently. "Did you see his father in there?"

"I wouldn't know if I had, I don't know what he looks like." He had been to Gaara's house twice before their temporary move back to Suna, and no one besides the three siblings had been home either of the times.

"I only saw him once myself, when he was asked to come to the school to discuss some problems Gaara-kun was having," Lee continued, and Sasuke suddenly remembered he had gone to school with Gaara before.

"What had he done? Is the rumor that he killed someone true, too?" he snorted quietly.

Lee shook his head. "It was in first grade, he was very different back then. Perhaps if I had noticed and tried to befriend him sooner he would have never gotten the way he was when you first met him. But it is a good thing that you did, because now he is more like that again, only with less tears and more smiles."

Sasuke stared at the koi, wishing he had at least that stupid rod if he couldn't have a cigarette.

"The day following his father's visit, he came to school with a bandage on his head. After that he didn't refer to his father as 'otou-sama' anymore, it was simply 'that man' if he had to mention him at all."

Sasuke remembered the kanji Gaara had on his forehead. It looked like a tattoo from afar, but he had been close enough to notice it was a scar. One of the gashes was much deeper than the others, like the whole thing had been built around that one stroke. Sasuke had assumed Gaara had just lost the nerve to carve that deep after the first cut, and that he had done it in some insane attempt to look more badass like any kid with a homemade tattoo or piercing. Now he wondered.

"Chiyo-baasama was the one who brought it to the rest of the Sabaku family's attention that Gaara-kun and his siblings were more or less raising themselves," Lee mentioned, and when Sasuke expected him to go on and conjure up a string of praises for the old woman for that feat, he didn't, instead watching Sasuke like he was waiting for him to verbalize those praises instead.

Sasuke narrowed his eyes at him. "And what do you want me to do now that I know his sob story? Hold his hand if he starts crying?" He cringed at the memory of that situation reversed. He hadn't meant to make a reference to that, not that Lee could know about it.

"I believe Naruto-kun already has that covered, but he invited you, so you must have a purpose here," Lee said as he stood up. "Let us do our best!" he added, like it was a challenge they had all accepted with the invitation.

Sasuke said nothing. He hadn't known Gaara had _personally_ invited him. Sakura was there because she had been close to Gaara's grandmother and admired her greatly, Naruto and Lee were the supportive boyfriends. He had thought he was there just so he wouldn't be the only one of Gaara's friends who didn't get an invitation.

Still –so Gaara didn't get along with his old man? Nothing new. Join the club. Having a bad childhood hardly made you special, and if it did, then surely Sasuke was more special. But Lee was right about one thing, he would give him that –this was the funeral of a woman who, for the past five years, had acted as a parent for someone who could be referred to as his friend. And though nobody probably expected it of an ex-druggie, the pride of the Uchiha family (which he was going to be, even if it wouldn't be in the way that was expected of him) still had some _manners_.

He opened the door a few minutes after Lee had gone in, not wanting to seem like he had been _brought_ back. Nobody spoke when he sat down, and he didn't look at them when he said it.

"Sorry."

The smile Gaara gave him when he did look in their direction made him quickly add "I just needed some fresh air" before they got the wrong idea. The fact that the smile didn't disappear told him they weren't fooled, but Gaara only nodded and left it at that.

When he got home all he wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed. He could hear Itachi and his band practicing and arguing about something at the other side of the house, but he had slept through more noise than that.

He got as far as in front of the bathroom door when he heard a splash inside. The door creaked open as he pushed it. Did _no one_ use locks anymore?

"Hi there, Sasuke. I thought it was you."

Sasuke stared in disbelief at his old accomplice. "What are you doing in my bath tub, Suigetsu?"

A toothy, _sharp_ grin glistened from the sea of bubbles. There was probably no soap left at all. "Bathing, duh."

Sasuke groaned. He did so not need this right now. "Why at my house?"

"Because I was at your house." Suigetsu stood up from the tub and walked out to Sasuke's room, dripping water and foam all over the floor, and started to open closet doors. "You got a towel around here somewhere?"

"Yeah, in here," Sasuke growled and pulled a towel from the bathroom shelf.

"Oh, how did I miss that," Suigetsu laughed, wetting the floor a second time as he walked back and getting some on Denka and Hina, who had gotten too close in their curiosity. The two cats hissed and fled the room in a flurry. "What was that? You've got tanukis as pets now? Awesome!"

Sasuke just handed him the towel and a scowl.

"Long time no see, what've you been up to?" Suigetsu asked and turned on the shower.

"School."

"Cool, they found you then. I mean of course they did, since you're here instead of dead in a ditch."

Sasuke cocked a brow. "_You_ helped Naruto and Sakura?" Right after the words left his lips he realized he should have known which three of his allies would have, but he couldn't take back showing his surprise now. "What about Karin and Juugo? Where are they?"

"Dead in a ditch."

Sasuke tried not to look upset.

"Not!" Suigetsu grinned and threw him back the wet towel. "Just kidding, they're with your brother."

"You're all here? What are you up to?"

"Itachi invited us, actually. You may know he's got that band thing going on."

As if Sasuke could forget.

"They're doing some changes, a few old members want out and they need new ones to replace them. I think they're considering having Karin as a bassist."

"What about you?"

"Me? I don't know shit about music, Juugo just wanted to see you and I thought I'd tag along. He's been better you know, went to see a real doctor and got drugs that actually make him less crazy as opposed to more. I don't think Akatsuki wants him as their lead singer, either, though."

Sasuke noticed they had gotten out of his room and into the hallway, but there was something missing. "Shouldn't you put your clothes on?"

Suigetsu just shrugged and started looking for his clothing. "Anyway, they were gonna pick Itachi, since he's pretty and all that… but his singing voice is crap." Sasuke smirked. "Which is bullshit, since so is Yahiko's. You know that guy with piercings that they have as their front man now? He's not really singing. Konan's boyfriend runs the band _and_ does his vocals. If you ask me your brother has a stage fright, he's scared shitless of being the center of attention."

Sasuke smirked wider.

"But Nagato doesn't want the job either, he's happy just sitting in his emo poet corner and writing songs about pain and rain and whatever else rhymes with that," Suigetsu said as he finally pulled his shirt over his head and followed Sasuke out the door. "He said if they could get someone with Itachi's looks but prettier, and a good singing voice so they wouldn't need playback either, and enough confidence to look hot on stage, that'd be perfect. You know someone like that?"

Sasuke tried to stay cool, but he couldn't help the smirk he still had on his face when it was his turn to shrug. He was going to wait a while longer before he admitted it, but he had made a decision.

Juugo and Karin rushed to greet him as he opened the door to Akatsuki's practice room. He walked straight to the 'emo poet corner' of the evening, where a skinny guy with bright red scene hair hunched at a desk with a bored-looking blue-haired woman folding the pile of paper next to him into random things. With the confidence of a man who had finally found a way to realize his dream (though he preferred calling it an ambition), Sasuke made his impressive entrance.

"I heard you're looking for a lead singer. I'll join if you ask nicely."

"Sasuke? I was under the impression you didn't like singing," Nagato asked, apparently in utter amazement. Good.

"Did Itachi tell you that? He must have misunderstood. I love it," Sasuke deadpanned.

Nagato nodded. "Let's hear it then. I expect you to do this justice." The man gave him a crumpled sheet of paper and gestured at the mic stand.

Sasuke took a look at the lyrics. 'The Sky Is Crying', huh?

_'The world will know true pain_

_Giving birth to peace in endless chain of hatred_

_You say my peace is a lie_

_But in this cursed world_

_A peace where people truly understand one another is nothing but a fantasy_

_Love breeds sacrifice_

_Sacrifice breeds hatred_

_You can know pain_

_But my pain is greater than yours' _

Yes, he could get used to voicing this stuff.

As the band begun to play, he threw a glance at his older brother, who was looking adequately jealous. This was indeed perfect.

He thought he had seen Itachi smirk just as he turned his head back and heard him mutter something that might have been 'foolish little brother' just as the cymbal clashed loudly, but he must have imagined it.

* * *

-

Kokkai = The National Diet of Japan, the legislative body of the country.

Otou-sama = A pretty formal way to speak of your father. Gaara calls his father this in his flashbacks.

The lyrics are things Nagato/Pain said in the manga. The title of the song was said by Konan.  
So no, this isn't a songfic, lol.


	8. Chapter Eight: Slip

**Chapter Eight: Slip**

Had anyone told Sasuke seven years, a month or even a day before, he would not have believed them. He lived his life by certain principles, and always had. He had goals, and he had pride. It all came down to a few simple facts –all of which seemed to be ceasing to apply in reverse order of importance.

He switched his phone from one ear to the other and searched his jacket pockets for a tissue, unsurprisingly finding none –he wasn't supposed to need any on this little non-smoking smoking break, after all. Rather than going back inside or walking around the premises in search of a vending machine, he blew his nose on the hem of his gown (under which he had thankfully been allowed to wear pants). They would just give him a new one later.

But it hadn't really started tonight, had it? There had been warning signs.

One was how much he genuinely enjoyed his new job as the face of what was no longer his brother's band. The audience loved the new, even darker Akatsuki, and the songs in which many paid for the sins of few, a black fire burned forever and everything was an illusion came from deeper in Sasuke's soul than he should have been comfortable to reveal.

He was writing them now, you see.

He had been asked to, even, and to his surprise he had gladly accepted. Supposedly it was to rub it in Itachi's face harder, but that he hadn't cared when _Itachi_ hadn't cared should definitely have set off alarms.

And tonight? Well, _last_ night, by now; it had to be almost six in the morning by now, five thirty at the very least.

So he had wanted to celebrate their newest and so far best record contract and gotten in a fight with some rapper in the process. It could happen to anyone. How had it led to this?

Sasuke dabbed at his eyes with another spot on his truly anti-fit cotton garment (well, it wasn't any more revealing or billowy than the pirate shirt he performed in, but that he had at least picked out himself), wondering if he could have still stopped the proverbial snowball before or after he woke up here.

* * *

Judging by the digits on the devices in the room that most looked like they might be telling the time, it was about five.

At first he thought he was having a nightmarish version of a flashback.

Everyone was outside his room again –and he did mean everyone. Even that weirdo Sai from the high school art club had shown up (Sasuke had heard Kakashi ask him to be more discreet about taking pictures), and the only time he remembered having talked to him was when the ash-pale boy had smuggled his pet rat to class and it had crawled into Sasuke's bag. Did this guy not understand how traumatizingly embarrassing it was to have to tell the teacher a rodent literally ate your homework?

Naruto wouldn't sit still and had to keep announcing he was going out and coming back, over and over. Obito and grandpa were apparently arguing about which one's parenting methods were more to blame for this. Someone was crying, and it was probably Sakura.

A nasal treble chided Sasuke's party-buddies for being so careless. A creaky yapping threw back that Karin had been in the bathroom when it started, and it wasn't their fault they had been distracted by a bunch of cosplayers who'd somehow thought their Star Wars stormtrooper costumes were supposed to be samurai. Before Ino and Suigetsu could further fuel his headache, Juugo calmly told them Sasuke wouldn't want his friends fighting.

Damn right. At least if they were doing so within his earshot.

"Still nothing," an all-too familiar voice suddenly said, following a set of approaching, swift footsteps.

"We'll try again in the morning," one he hadn't heard before that night immediately replied, "He is stable now, and it's night there as well."

"No… he's not, is he?" They had to be standing really close to the door, judging by how quiet their voices had gotten and that he could still make out words –even a sigh from the other one.

"Naruto…"

"In the long run, I mean. I guess that's what you were trying to tell me, huh?"

Sasuke perked up –did they mean him? Was there something no one had bothered to tell him about the seriousness of his condition?

"Come sit down."

"No, there must be something I…"

The voices trailed further away and got lost among the others. Sasuke strained his hearing, but only got what he had already labeled as noise. He did feel like he'd swallowed acid (of the corrosive, not the psychedelic kind) and gotten struck by a lightning and smashed under a giant brick, and he could say without much exaggeration that every the cell in his body ached. He was probably on painkillers, too, so it had to be much worse without the medication.

He was just about to pull off his IV drip and whatever else was limiting his movement to turning around on the metal bed, to follow the voices and ask when the door opened.

Gaara simply stared for a moment. "…Do you need help?" he asked, and glanced at the bathroom door.

"Huh? No, I'll live," Sasuke muttered, and smoothed the tape holding a tube in place back onto his hand, "unless there's something I should know, that is." Gaara closed the door behind him, and the picture seemed to be missing something. "Where's your husband?"

"Naruto is asleep."

That would be the only reason Sasuke could think of, too, for why they weren't within inches of each other. The apartment they had finally scraped up together was spectacularly tiny, but they had appeared not to mind, on account of probably sitting in each other's lap all the time anyway.

"The police will want to talk to you soon," Gaara told him. "Do you think you're up to it?" Sasuke thought about it, and nodded. Better to have it over sooner, though first he would like to get a few answers himself. Gaara seemed to understand he didn't mean right now, and took a seat in the chair next to his bed. "I'm sure you'll get off with paying the damages, but tell them everything you remember. We're not lying for you this time."

"Damage? To the rapper guy?" Sasuke balked. "I never laid a finger on him; his brother's a former pro wrestler _and_ a lawyer! I'm not that stupid!"

"I know, I met him," Gaara replied, unfazed. "It appears he has now been hired by the restaurant owner, who is the one seeking compensation."

"That's just because I'm an Uchiha!"

Figures. He knew the restaurant had been a bad choice, being owned by half of the once-legendary duo Hanzo&Danzo, who claimed grandpa Madara had screwed them over with the marketing of their comeback album. Truth be told, he had picked that joint specifically to flaunt his success.

"And probably because you broke two of his windows. He understands you didn't mean to harm him, but he did get glass shards on his arm and face, and almost lost an eye."

Sasuke said nothing.

Gaara sighed again. "Karin is afraid of you."

That had to be a joke, and not a very good one. Karin scared _him_ sometimes; she wasn't too right in the head. During their time looking for Itachi, she had declared she was his... something called 'arurekkiino-chan' (a harlequin?) and that he was her 'jookaa-sama', and Sasuke hadn't bothered to even acknowledge that by correcting her about how the fictional couple his brother had later mentioned was from some gaijin comics he had was hardly the most romantic one to pick as an example. She was irreplaceable as a band member, though, so he put up with her.

Sasuke snorted, but Gaara's stare stayed serious. "Apparently you bit her," he said in what sounded like a plea for an explanation.

"I don't remember that," was all he could say, because he didn't. A nod told him that wasn't a surprise. Instead of filling him in, though, his companion fell silent and leaned away, crossing his arms.

Sasuke studied him sitting there staring at a wall in his ostensible pragmatism. He couldn't help the impression Gaara was holding back a lash-out, and he had to wonder why. This wasn't his business, strictly speaking. Just when he thought he wasn't going to say anything more,

"…Do you know what about Naruto and I had our first fight?"

Sasuke quirked a brow. Was this a trick question? Maybe his not being stable had to do with memory and this was a test. "Yeah, I was there. The whole school was."

That triggered a tiny, wistful smile. "No, I mean as a couple –just today, actually. I had a… conversation with my siblings, concerning my future. There was some disagreement over what was brought up as the biggest obstacle to our careers."

"What, besides the fag thing?"

Gaara closed his eyes, and if it hadn't been so brief Sasuke would have thought he was counting to ten. Alright, maybe that had been a little uncalled for.

"I don't think that's as big a problem as it might have seemed to be," Gaara shrugged. "We aren't even the first ones… although probably the first ones who came out before retirement."

Sasuke nodded along. He had read the tabloids, too, and that Yagura fellow had been on them all week. Gaara turned to look at him.

"It's you."

"Huh? Oh… I see." Sasuke scowled back. "So that's how it is." Gaara wouldn't look away, and he glared harder because the dolt didn't seem to realize he was supposed to look angry when saying something like that. Then again, why was he angry himself? "Well, you know what, that's just fine."

No answer apart from the continued stare.

"I expected as much anyway," he intoned with precision, proud of not sounding bitter, because he was not. "You're going to be a politician, right? So at least you're starting to act like one. I'll leave you alone and you don't have to worry about me ruining your spotless repu– "

"We are worried about _you_, Sasuke."

He was used to that voice not having a whole lot of inflection, but now that it was obviously trying to stay level he couldn't help but notice how far from the detached monotone Gaara had actually come.

"I… I'm fine, really," he said back, warily. "I'll probably be out of here first thing in the morning."

"A little more broadly than that. I don't think it's too late for you to find a direction for your life that doesn't get you back here again."

"And I said I'm fine," Sasuke hissed. "Stop sounding like you're about to hand me a pamphlet."

"How much did you drink?"

Sasuke ground his teeth together. Oh yes, he could see what Gaara was trying to do. "One beer, for your information." The redhead didn't look convinced. "Obviously a bad idea, I get it, but I thought I could handle that much." It was completely hypocritical to demand total abstinence of him just because he had had trouble with the stuff before –he wasn't some lightweight baby. How about taking that speech to Sakura, who had mistaken Naruto for Lee and proceeded to deliver him the most embarrassing love confession ever, after just a few toasts at their graduation party?

"I know the blood alcohol concentration you had when you were brought in. Try again."

"I must have accidentally taken a sip from Suigetsu's glass."

Blue-green eyes looked at him with disappointment, and he supposed he could relate. He could have come up with a better one. "Suigetsu is a recovering alcoholic as well. He only drank water." Sasuke winced at the term. He could swear he had made clear at some point he did _not_ like having that label applied to himself.

"Then somebody else switched their drink with mine…"

"There is a receipt of your purchases."

"Alright, so I probably got completely shit-faced all on my own!" he snapped. "It was just this one time, okay! And I'm not paying a yen to that old coot for letting his bartender serve me alcohol when I'm sure he's read the papers and should know bet– DON'T TOUCH ME!!" He tried to pull his hand out of the one that had suddenly closed around it, but the grip was firm.

The waiting room behind the door was suddenly completely silent.

A small drop of warm, clear liquid fell on his arm, and now Sasuke _had_ to get out of there! He didn't even feel sad about this! Why would he…

He looked up to another tear running down from the blue-green eyes he now noticed were more bloodshot than he remembered them to have been even during their insomnious childhood days. Oh shit.

He'd made _Gaara_ cry.

He was in so much trouble.

"I consider you a friend," a soft voice told him with an unfamiliar quaver. Sasuke felt himself tense, and he must have hidden his perplexedness pretty badly, because Gaara felt compelled to add, "Is it really that big a surprise?"

He was just about to remind Gaara that those were the exact words the redhead had told _Naruto_ a week before he had had the misfortune to walk in on them making out, but thought better of it.

"No," he hurried to reply instead, and it was the truth. He knew a lot of people considered him a friend –for what reason, he couldn't always fathom. He considered some of them his friends, too, and Gaara was among the first. He just couldn't see what there was to gain from pointing it out when everyone knew.

"Do you truly wish I didn't?"

Sasuke found himself shaking his head. He supposed that was true, too.

"When I was a child, 'friends' was simply a list of screen names I could collect by clicking something in another user's profile," Gaara divulged. "It was supposed to be something desirable, but I just couldn't see the point. It was merely a status symbol, or a tool for getting things I wanted. And so, I didn't have much use for this thing called 'friends'.

"Actually sharing things with other people –real things, not just files– pain and sadness, even happiness… That was a weakness, trusting someone enough to let them know I have feelings, too," he went on. Sasuke could feel his free had twitching with the urge to do something to shut him up. "Then, I met–"

"Naruto," Sasuke spat out impatiently to finish for him; he already knew this part. Rude though it might be, he wanted to remind this friend of his (who, by the way, had never bothered to send in a request to friend him) that now was no time to start gushing about his manic pixie dream boy.

Gaara blinked away tears in surprise, and then smiled in that sad, small way he hated. It made him want to do things he might regret.

"All of you," he was corrected.

Sasuke involuntarily repeated in his mind the 'meeting', starting in reverse order from what had then seemed like an effective method to end it (he then recalled the eloquent right hook had been preceded by a comment about a backpack that looked like a ballsack, which had been a wholly justifiable comeback to a remark about a hairdo that looked like it had gotten stuck in a vacuum cleaner), and his hand twitched again when Gaara squeezed the other one. He was beginning to scare himself.

_Then_ the flashback got to the little monologue preceding the insults, and the still eerily familiar look those now-leaky eyes had had in them as it had been delivered. He understood a little better, nowadays, where that confidence in the words' finality had stemmed from. And he supposed maybe it wasn't such a mystery after all, how this strange young man who wouldn't let him ignore him and that crazy brat who had gone out of his way to point out to him he was ignoring everybody could be the same person.

And, he understood it wasn't _punching_ someone who was sobbing practically into his shoulder and clutching his fingers for comfort, that he kept wanting to do.

Now he _really_ scared himself.

* * *

Cue dramatic lightning as he exited the building.

The rainstorm he walked into had been in the air all evening and night, and that it had finally broken out seemed to reflect his own mood. Suddenly he could understand the fascination Nagato had had with such a commonplace thing.

He hadn't thought about the supposedly-not anorexic man since his disappearance from their lives, but he wondered now if he should have said something to Konan about it before she, too, disappeared. Or sent something, whatever you were supposed to do –another missed opportunity to display manners, he supposed.

Naruto had, but then again Naruto had blamed himself for it. Sasuke had thought he was being an idiot. Surely even Naruto Uzumaki couldn't be so irritating that a bit of heart-to-heart with him could make a guy kill himself, and when the note left behind remembers to apologize for even some frogs its writer killed as a kid, you know it had been just a matter of time anyway. But apparently, the night before, he and Nagato had had a 'deep and philosophical conversation about life and literature' which he suspected to have contributed to the decision –and those were his exact words. Sasuke would have thought he was being sarcastic, if he didn't know about the famously book-dumb blond's years of exposure to the _other_ skinny redhead in their lives.

Sasuke sighed out some of the fresh air he had wanted to get (not likely with the particulate matter it had, but maybe the rain was helping with that at least, and he had inhaled worse things). Damn Gaara.

He wanted to regret what he had eventually done before coming out here, but even that seemed difficult. Could this night get any more confusing?

He sat on a bench under the canopy near the hospital entrance, and careful of the patch the random nurse he'd persuaded to rid him of the now unnecessary drip had put on the needle hole, stuck his hands in the pockets of his jacket. His fingertips caught a hold of his cell phone, and on a whim he dug it out. The time was apparently 05:22.

He had set the thing on mute before going to the restaurant, and there was an unanswered call from just fifteen minutes ago. The caller ID was unmistakable.

Feeling he might regret this as well (and not the least because of the resulting bill, though surely he wasn't broke), he called back.  
His brother's voice when he answered was tired, but not sleepy.

Itachi told him Susan sent him her love, to which Sasuke just said an awkward 'thanks', because he didn't really know her –she was Itachi's internet girlfriend, not his. He told Itachi he was fine, and, since he didn't seem to know that yet, that he was at a hospital. And that yes, he was _fine_ now, and even why he was there. Itachi was quiet for a while, and Sasuke didn't know what to expect to hear next.

"Hm. I suspected it's about you when I saw Naruto has been trying to call me all night. I surmise he decided to eat crow and admit he can't keep an eye on you as he bragged he would" was what he got.

Had he now? What did Itachi know about that? Was the dobe now his spy or something?

"Listen, I'll be home later today; in the afternoon unless the airport personnel thinks Amaterasu needs another check for concealed weapons of mass destruction," his brother continued, surprising him. Such a quick return wasn't part of the schedule he had originally announced for his vacation across the ocean. "Stay out of trouble until then."

"Save the moral lecture," Sasuke muttered listlessly. He would have liked to come up with something cleverer, but nights like this left the worst hangovers, and that wasn't even due to his earlier intoxication. "I've already had enough people cry tears of blood for my poor soul to start a bank tonight. I get it." Itachi went quiet again, keeping him in suspense.

Then it occurred to him that maybe he was waiting for him to go on. He wasn't sure how to do that. For the first time since he could remember he had no script for a conversation with his brother.

"Did you get the last memo?" he asked in a change of subject, referring to his habit of keeping the band members informed of things considering Akatsuki by group mail. That was the Uchiha brothers' primary method of communicating, really.

Yes, they still lived in the same house. Yes, the house was big enough that they didn't have to see each other outside of band practice. It had worked for them so far.

"The one about Hidan wanting out due to a newfound religious conviction?"

"Yeah. Scrap the song I sent with it," he moved on, wanting to get this said before he forgot about it, and to get it over with quickly.

"I thought it was the final version."

"Well, I changed my mind," Sasuke rambled, "It's… outdated. No. I…" He took a deep breath. He shouldn't sound so upset, not to Itachi. "It turns out I plagiarized the chorus." He was man enough to admit his mistakes, let no one tell you otherwise.

"I see," Itachi said plainly. Sasuke was glad he hadn't asked for specifics.

He had to admit Gaara would have made a decent 'emo poet' at twelve (and despite the tone he kept hearing the term being used in, that was a recognition –it was a legitimate genre, damnit! ) …unless he had quoted the lines from somewhere himself, of course. He did like that one American (or was it Arabian? _Arabesque_?) writer he said he'd discovered through having the same birthday, and goth, emo –it wasn't that big a difference, was it? He would have most likely let Sasuke use the lyrics the way they were if it was all original, but the words didn't feel right anymore. Perhaps they _were_ outdated.

"Sasuke, I've been meaning to–"

"He doesn't know I used–"

Both of them shut up at the same time, like pedestrians almost walking into each other and waiting to see which way the other was going to dodge to avoid repeating the situation ad infinitum. Sasuke exhaled audibly, to signal he was going to speak. "You first."

Itachi waited a beat. Then, he dropped another bomb like a good little terrorist: "It's just… I don't think I ever thanked you for coming to look for me…" Sasuke suddenly realized he wasn't the only one with a brother he didn't know how to talk to. "…I had my own stupid pride, from what father used to say about you."

"That you were the better son, you mean," Sasuke said numbly to confirm what he thought was obvious.

"It took me until quite recently to realize that's what he told _you_," Itachi continued with a strain in his voice that shouldn't be there.

Sasuke felt he was going to be sick. _None_ of this should be there.

First Gaara was crying, and then Sasuke was giving him what had started out as a somewhat acceptable air-hug and quickly gotten out of hand into something that could be described as an _embrace_...

(And he might have rubbed his back, too, and even whispered something comforting!)

And now Itachi _–Itachi Uchiha was supposed to be cool as a cucumber and always know what he was doing, for fuck's sake!_ Everything he did was part of an elaborate scheme! This was messing with his whole concept of _reality_!

"When I was alone with him, all he could talk about was what a better son _you_ were."

Sasuke couldn't breathe, let alone provide a comment.

"I think… I think it was his way of trying to toughen us up. Or, grandpa's way. He was trying to be the better son-in-law himself, I'm sure."

Sasuke sniffed his nostrils that were feeling drippy, and he found water was running down his cheeks. _Now_ was he crying? He didn't remember at which point he had wandered from the dry safety of the covered bench to the rainstorm or how he could not have noticed, and he didn't _know_ whether it was all rainwater or if there were tears in the mix. It should have been the perfect alibi, but it only managed to terrify him.

"Sasuke? Are you there?"

He took a big, gurgling, sniveling inhale.

"OH MY GOD, I DON'T KNOW IF I'M CRYING, I'VE FORGOTTEN HOW IT FEEEEEEELS!!" he heard come out of his mouth in a waily mockery of his voice. Alright, that clarified that. He _was_ crying.

Itachi said nothing, and if he had been there with him, Sasuke could imagine he might have stared helplessly –maybe awkwardly patted his shoulder– not sure what to do with a snotty, shivering Eternal Rival. They had never really known what to do with each other in the first place; their inebriated fight years ago had to be their most frank expression of emotion since they were toddlers and bawling was okay when you fell and cut your knee.

"Foolish big brother," Sasuke sobbed, dignity completely irrelevant, "You're supposed to hate me!"

"I'm sorry, Sasuke."

"Well, _I_ hated _you_!"

"That's what big brothers are for."

Sasuke blew his nose on his gown hem, soaked from the rain already, and hiccupped. He had been right, this made a terrible mess. How Gaara managed to quietly blink out a few clean tears and look like letting him shed any more would equate kicking a wounded puppy was beyond him. He couldn't see himself right now, but knew it was not a sight he would delight in wrapping his arms around. Yet he kind of wished someone would anyway.

"Are uncle and your friends still there?" Itachi asked.

"Yeah, I think. I told the guys to go home at least," he said, meaning his bandmates. It had gotten on his nerves how everyone was waiting up with him like he was dying or something. It was making a scene at the hospital to have that many guests, too.

"I shouldn't have told you this on the phone."

Sasuke was certain it was the only way he had been able to get it said, though.

"I'm gonna kill you tomorrow," he said with a feeble cough. Itachi made an agreeing grunt. "Grandpa, too," he added as an afterthought, liking that channel for his upcoming vengeance already. Someone had to pay for them growing up so distant, and Big Bad Boss Madara finally felt like the correct target.

Sasuke bent his head back in a shaky sigh at things beginning to fall into place… He wasn't sure what would really happen in the afternoon, but this was a turning point in one direction or the other. Talk about redemption in the rain.

But wait a minute –where was the water that was supposed to be washing away his anguish?

He opened his eyes to dotted canvas stretched between strands of metal.

"Uh, gotta to go," he said to the phone and attempted to quickly wipe off some of the goo on his face as he noticed who was holding the umbrella over him. "Later."

"Hn."

Sasuke repeated the ambiguous sound in a sort of wordless goodbye. He waited a few seconds, noticing Itachi was doing the same, until he finally concluded neither was going to say anything more and this wasn't a game of chicken to see which one would hang up first.

Initially he wasn't sure what to do besides hoping he didn't look _too_ horrible, but maybe it was a good thing if he did. They were already sharing an umbrella, so maybe this was some attempt to flirt with him. Then he remembered he did indeed have a line ready for Karin.

"Sorry." He gestured at nothing in particular about her, realizing he didn't know exactly which part he should. "About your... How bad is it?"

She glanced at the dressing peeking out from under her right sleeve. "Just a bandaid. Don't worry about it."

He had to admit himself he had. The information was a relief even though he knew she played left-handed.

"It won't happen again," he said firmly, as much to himself as her.

Karin nodded and handed him a long desired tissue, letting him wipe his face into presentable condition before they went back inside. He couldn't think of anything else to say, and he found himself a little frustrated by that. She offered him no aid in breaking the silence, for once.

He supposed he just might, possibly, deserve that.

They found the chairs in the hallway outside his room occupied by sleeping friends and family. Uncle Obito was there like he had imagined, as were Juugo and Suigetsu, and even Sai, whose camera was in Ino's lap. Sakura was on the other side of the hallway with Lee's arm around her shoulders and some traces of wiped off makeup trails on her cheeks. The man and woman snoring next to them surprised him the most, when he recognized them from… well, it had to be the funeral where he had seen them last. It made sense, though, as he realized he would probably find in his room at least as much as he had left there.

Kakashi came around the corner from the opposite direction, with a cardboard cup that emitted the metallic stench of instant coffee. Since he was awake, Sasuke asked him if he would see to Karin and whoever else wanted to sleep the rest of the night in their own bed getting home. He wished her good night, and caught himself before he forgot to say an uneasy thanks.

She accepted it, which was way too alleviating to be like him. But what was like him anymore?

It wasn't as scary as he had thought not to know that.

In the room he threw off the soaked clothes and opted to sleep in his thankfully still dry underpants. The company he had was too occupied to care about his level of decency under the covers.

He was careful not to bump into the head of red hair pillowed on thin arms on the bed, as he crawled under the disposable, papery sheet. His bothersome visitor's sleep appeared much more peaceful than when Sasuke had untangled those arms from himself to go wander in the rain, and it looked like tucking in was taken care of as well. Naruto had brought another chair next to him and was half holding Gaara, and the jacket Sasuke knew belonged to the redhead but hadn't been on him earlier that night was spread over his shoulders. They were both going to have a sore neck and back when they woke up, but that was their choice.

He decided he was going to sleep, or pretend to do so, for as long as the hospital staff would let him, hoping they would be gone by the time he had to get up.

There was only so much happy ending an Uchiha could take in one go.

.

.

.

* * *

Itachi reads Batman comics, just so you know, so he knows who Harley Quinn and The Joker are. ^^

_Eating crow_ is a real expression in the English language, lol. I'm surprised I haven't run into other mentions of that in relation to the scene you know I'm talking about, because it's even quite fitting. Look it up.

Gaara also does have the same birthday as Edgar Allan Poe.

Tbc; this is not the last chapter. It's the second to last. Sorry it took me this long to continue the fic! ^^;


End file.
